Adoption
I have been a bit MIA regarding the blog for the last month & apologize for my lack of posting. Not a whole lot has been going on necessarily besides getting ready for the holiday’s & feeling in a bit of a funk due to the lack of activity with our adoption agency.It was really starting to feel that we’d never get a baby… or at least that it was going to take a LONG time. The thought was pretty depressing to say the least, despite the fact we’ve only actually been actively waiting with our agency for just shy of 3 months.
Then yesterday morning I got a call, totally out of the blue, wondering if we wanted to be considered for a possible match situation with a birth mom that really liked us as well as another family, however the fee was a bit over our set budget.
I made some phone calls to see if we could find access to the extra that would be required & then responded saying yes we wanted to be considered. I was advised that the birth mother specialist with the agency would contact me with more info soon & then we waited, and waited…. and waited.
At 4pm I finally emailed our worker asking for a status update & a short while later she replied back that the birth mother’s specialist wanted to have a chance to verify everything with the birth mom & finish some paper work before he called us so we could expect a call from him in the morning. It sounded promising but I didn’t want to get my hopes up.
The morning came & the morning went. Still, we didn’t hear anything. The suspense of waiting for answers was killing me and around 1:30pm I emailed our worker again.
By 3pm I hadn’t heard back from her nor the birth mother’s specialist so I took things into my own hands & called the agency asking to talk to the birth mothers specialist directly & I got put through to his voicemail, which really started me thinking that this was heading south fast since apparently no one wanted to give me answers I figured they either didn’t have any or it wasn’t going to be good news.
Less than 10 minutes later he called me back & announced that the birth mother did in fact pick us!!!
We’re matched!!!
He then proceeded to fill me in on all the details:
* It’s a boy!
* She’s due Sunday December 18th
* It’s her first baby
* She’s in New York
* The adoption rules will be based on Florida’s Laws which is excellent news for us because it means once she signs the papers it’s irrevocable. She won’t be able to sign them however for 48 hours after delivery unless the baby is released earlier.
* Baby will be full African American
* She picked us because she knew she was having a boy & asked to be shown profiles from couples who specifically wanted a boy. Out of the profiles she was shown she really liked our picture although I have no idea which one.
* She definitely wants pictures, letters & emails post placement which we’re more than happy to do. I do this already with Alanna’s birth mom.
* She isn’t certain that she’ll want post placement visits but would like the option left open. We’ve decided to be ok with that so long as she understands we’re Military & could end up stationed pretty well anywhere so she would likely have to come to us. I also specified not more than yearly & the specialist really doesn’t think she’s overly concerned about it & likely won’t desire it but just doesn’t want the option to be closed.
* Sadly, for me anyways, she doesn’t want anyone (not even her family) in the delivery room. She wants to do it totally alone & I’m pretty bummed to once again miss out on this beautiful moment but I do understand & am certainly not going to let it be a deal breaker.
So, at this point that’s about everything I can say. I’m beyond excited & am not sure how I’m going to sleep between now & then. The timing is absolutely awful though. My gramma is due to be arriving on the 24th to spend Christmas & New Years with us & now we very well may not be here. She’s ok with having her ticket rerouted if possible though to bring her to us in New York where she can stay with us & meet her newest great grandchild.
Roy’s sister has volunteered to fly to Florida & stay with the girls as well as look after our pets for us & this would be a tremendous blessing. We were advised not to bring the girls to the hospital with us because we want to give the impression that the new baby is our primary focus at that time & having to worry about two 4 year olds climbing all over everything would be quite a distraction, not to mention having them cooped up with us in a small hotel room for a week or two along with the newborn wouldn’t be a whole lot of fun for anyone. So, I hope it all works out that his sister can in fact make it out here to do this for us.
The issue though is that everything has to happen at a moments notice. Once we get the call that she’s gone into labor we have to book our flights to New York ASAP & have his sister book her flights here ASAP & arrive BEFORE we have to leave. Preferably with enough time to get her to our house (we live an hour from the airport & she’s never been here before!) & show her around so she knows where to find everything & so on.
We may well be spending Christmas at a hotel in New York as well. I hear it’s beautiful this time of year & am actually super excited about being there but am saddened that we might be separated from the girls for Christmas. Regardless though, this will definitely be a Christmas we’ll never forget & this little bundle will be the best Christmas gift EVER!
I’ll keep you all posted….
We received an email yesterday informing us that our video for our adoption profile has been completed.
I’ve been feeling incredibly nervous about the creation of this video. As we took all our various pieces of footage, with the little video camera our agency sent to us to use, my anxiety about the whole ordeal grew.
We were extremely nervous as we conducted our interviews both together & individually. It felt weird & awkward talking to just the camera. We struggled trying to figure out how we should capture the moments of our lives in a way that would give a potential birth parent a view into the reality of our lives.
We didn’t want for anything to appear staged. We wanted to look natural but we worried if natural would be appealing? We worried if we’d just look blah, boring, undesirable, dorky?
Even our friends who also recorded a short piece for us were incredibly nervous in front of the camera probably even more so than us because lets face it… a tiny lil camera staring you down recording your every movement & word, adding an extra 10lbs to you too… well it’s plain intimidating!
We sent the video camera back with a memory card full of various footage on October 11th & I’ve been dreading the video going live on our profile ever since. Praying that we would be matched before the video went live, fearing it was going to work against us rather than for us.
Then yesterday I got the email… the video is ready:
It turned out sooooo much better than I ever could of hoped & will be live on our profile early next week!
Only a small amount of our footage taken was actually used & I’m a bit surprised they didn’t use any of our friends portion of interviews but regardless, I’m very pleased with the final product.
Here’s hoping the added personal depth that this adds will be what’s needed for our birth parents to finally pick us. I know we haven’t been waiting all that long but every day that passes seems like an eternity. It is so difficult having the future & growth of our family completely dependent on someone “picking us” & it’s hard not to feel like the awkward kids getting left to the end as the other kids pick their teams for a sport.
This is something we really struggled with writing. It’s just so hard to know what to say especially when we don’t know who the birth parent/s are yet or what the situation with them is going to be. This is what we came up with though & I figured we’d share it here.
You just never know who might be reading the blog. Perhaps it’s someone who could really use some help in writing their own “Dear Birth Parents” letter, or maybe even a birth parent themselves who’s currently struggling with the thought of putting their baby up for adoption. One just never knows….
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Dear Birth Parents:
Thank you so much for taking the time to peak at our profile and for considering us as the potential adoptive parents for your baby.
We won’t even pretend to imagine that we know the full range of emotions you’re feeling right now as you consider all of this but we do want you to rest assured that we care not just about the child you’re considering placing for adoption but for you as well. Without you this child would not be and your consideration of adoption is a courageous and admirable one that offers the most precious gift that could ever be given.
If we happen to be the family you choose to place your child with we hope that you will find comfort and peace in the fact that we will love them as if they were born to us and will raise them in a warm, loving, accepting, supportive and stable environment where they will always know their adoption story and be allowed to learn and stay connected to their heritage of birth.
Raising children and having a large family means the world to us. We love being parents and have always desired to have 3 or 4 children if we are to be so blessed.
Roy works outside of the home at the base we are currently stationed at since he is active duty with the US Air Force and has been for nearly 8 years. He is the primary bread winner of our family which allows for Jody to be a full time stay at home mom to our children. It has always been extremely important to Jody to be able to be the one there for our children, especially during the early years before they begin their school career, rather than having them spend their days in a day care environment.
Just as you want the very best for your child we too want the very best for the children entrusted to us to raise. We have strong moral values and want for each one of our children to grow up to be happy, healthy, confidant, educated, productive and responsible adults.
We are very family oriented and make regular trips each year to visit the various members of our extended families where we do many fun things together. We look forward to bringing this child along to share in these special trips where they will create many memories and be surrounded by yet more love and acceptance that a warm, caring and close knit family provides.
We would love to keep in touch via email and letters in order to share with you pictures and updates of how your little one is doing as they grow if this is something you are comfortable with and would desire.
Once again we thank you for taking the time to read our letter. We know that even the entirety of our profile only gives you a small glimpse of the life that our family has to offer but we hope it will be enough for you to see the depth of love and the sincerity we have in our hearts which we so look forward to sharing with your precious child. This child has already begun to fill our hearts since the day we decided to pursue adoption again and we so look forward to finally meeting and holding them in our arms.
Sincerely,
Roy & Jody
Our adoption homestudy was approved & we finally got everything done for our profile.
One of the agency’s media specialists worked her magic to put everything together into a pretty little profile that will be sent out to birth parents who match what we’re looking for as well as a version of it that will be published on the agencies website for birth parents to view.
We’ve also had one of the agency video camera’s for the last few weeks & have been working on getting various clips of us as a family to send in for another media specialist to turn into a professional looking 3 minute video of us.
I am really not thrilled about being forced to create a video for this. We feel incredibly awkward & uncomfortable in front of the camera as did our friends who participated in one of the “friend interviews” so I fear this video is going to portray us badly & do nothing more than work against us.
This whole thing being mandatory is apparently new for our agency. Our friends who went through them for their adoption 4 years ago never had to do this & even when I read the agency forums I see talk of people not being required to do this even a year ago, but for us it’s mandatory…. as is the $1,300 fee to go along with it.
I don’t know how much exposure we’re going to get either due to being gender specific for a boy but if we haven’t made a match in a couple months I’ll inquire for stats & see if any tweaks need to be made to our profile.
The agency put our written profile “active” on September 26th. So it’s been about 2 weeks now & we’ve heard nothing yet.
They do have a special “situations” page where they post available situations that they’re having trouble finding matches for. Sometimes it’s via 3rd party agencies or attorney’s who are posting it via our agency & in most cases the situations are available in Florida. This is great but at the same time it makes every one of these situations SUPER expensive. Apparently Florida doesn’t have a cap on how much can be charged for adoptions & I’ve heard sometimes they can even be as high as $70,000… That’s insane!!!
I do understand some of the reasons behind the increased fees since our agency has to get their cut & so does everyone else involved in making the match but $70,000 is ridiculous.
There is one on there currently which I inquired about but they still wanted $41,000 & even that is way above & beyond our budget.
They did tell us for the “agency assisted” program that we’re in (which means they will match us with a baby that is African American in full or in part) that our current budget which we have available is about average. So, I’m trying not to let the $41,000 situation freak me out too much because that is a “special situation” & not considered to be average.
Part of me fears we’re going to be waiting forever. That they won’t match us until we significantly increase our budget which we just can’t do or that no birth parent will find us appealing. I read the forums & see other people who were matched within just days of going active & others who’ve been waiting a year… sometimes two!!!
It’s hard not to let that get me down. I know everyone’s circumstances are different. I don’t know the reasons as to why their waits have been so long & I know that the baby who’s meant to be ours will end up with us when the time is right but I really don’t want to have to wait an incredibly long time for this to become a reality for us.
We’ve already been waiting for nearly 3 years! We had requested a fost to adopt placement of a baby boy back in California, when the girls were about 1-2 years old, but then we got orders sending us to Florida. We then pursued re licensing to foster to adopt here in Florida but then Roy got deployed. When he returned we decided to pursue infertility assistance instead, which then lead us back to adoption but this time we chose to go private instead of through the State.
I’m also terrified of the potential that’s there for disruption, meaning a match gets made & then the birth parent/s change their mind. I just pray if this does happen to us it happens before we invest our time & money into traveling to meet her. Before we ever meet & hold the baby.
Sadly, I’ve read a number of stories where adoptive families go through this sometimes multiple times. Where they go all the way to the hospital, are there in the room for the delivery, & are the first to hold the baby, only for the birth mom to change her mind at the last minute. How devastating!
I’m all for keeping families together when it’s for the best & if a mother truly believe she has what is needed to parent then she should if that’s what she wants but it just sucks that there’s no emotional protection for the adoptive family against this happening.
I suppose no matter which way it ends up going someone still ends up hurt. That’s just the nature of adoption.
I haven’t mentioned much here lately about my ongoing uterine drama, but in one of the last posts regarding it all, I mentioned that my old hospital records arrived. One of those records, which was the results of an exploratory Laparoscopy checking for Endometriosis when I was 16, mentioned that there was some “fusing” of one of my fallopian tubes… however it never went into any more detail as to what exactly that meant. I just remember being told that I had a “tilted” uterus & no Endometreosis so there was nothing to be concerned about.
I scanned & emailed the results to my Reproductive Endocrinologist & about a week later got a call saying he could “fix” me by going in via a minimally invasive surgery called a Hysteroscopy and just open up the fused tube which would then make my uterus “normal”… making us then eligible for the IVF shared risk refund program.
I was mind blown & baffled, excited & yet disappointed. Why couldn’t he of called me with this news a week earlier before we’d sent over $1000 to this adoption agency for our homestudy to be done (which was non refundable whether we proceeded with having it done or not)?!?!
After much turmoil & discussion with Roy we decided to go on & get the surgery done if only so that I would have less painful periods & we would still continue on with our plans to adopt perhaps pursuing IVF down the road.
So, last week I went in for the Hysteroscopy & was given a short lil video of how it went, which I’ve modified slightly by adding a title & credits, and for those interested here it is:
Basically, he couldn’t “fix” me. Once he got in there with his camera it became clear that I do in fact have a very real Unicornuate Uterus with a Non Communicative Right Horn.
It looks like this:
When it should look like this:
As you can see, the “functional” area of my uterus in the first image is quite a bit smaller then the functional area of the second image (The Doctor says about 60-70% of the normal size). Because of this, it will likely take many pregnancies (and potential late term losses) before I’m able to carry anywhere close to full term.
This means we’re likely looking at multiple pregnancy losses before we would ever find success & even if I did manage to carry one to at least a viable term (Around 24 weeks), having a baby born that prematurely sets them up for all kinds of health issues (From March of Dimes):
“such as breathing problems, and even death. Most premature babies require care in a newborn intensive care unit (NICU), which has specialized medical staff and equipment that can deal with the multiple problems faced by premature infants.
Premature babies also face an increased risk of lasting disabilities, such as mental retardation, learning and behavioral problems, cerebral palsy, lung problems and vision and hearing loss. Two recent studies suggest that premature babies may be at increased risk of symptoms associated with autism (social, behavioral and speech problems). Studies also suggest that babies born very prematurely may be at increased risk of certain adult health problems, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.”
I know that I would completely blame myself if I brought a baby into this world knowing it probably wouldn’t make it even close to full term & they ended up with severe issues because of it. It would be like intentionally setting them up for a life of difficulties just to appease my own selfish desire of experiencing pregnancy.
Because of this, I feel that it’s very clearly something I’m not meant to do & I am trying to focus on it being a blessing that it’s proven to be so difficult (even possibly impossible) for us to conceive naturally (as in without intervention like IVF) due to our combination of fertility issues. If Roy had super healthy swimmers & I could get pregnant at the drop of a hat we’d probably of experienced so much trauma & loss by now.
I believe in God & I believe that through this we’ve actually been protected from far worse emotional struggle than that of simply not being able to conceive. I truly believe it’s less painful to never conceive than to conceive & experience the loss.
I’m also trying to focus on the blessing that I actually have both of my kidneys, & at full function, since this condition (although quite rare) commonly comes along with the lack of one due to the kidneys & uterus both developing at the same time.
I found out after an ultrasound, done during a post op appointment with my Reproductive Endocrinologist yesterday, that my non communicative horn doesn’t appear to be developing any lining so he doesn’t believe I’m menstruating from that side & therefor feels there is no need for an additional surgery to remove this horn. This too is excellent news, but I’m just hoping he truly is correct on this. I have my concerns due to the extreme pain level I have always had when I do menstruate that lead me to believe he just might be wrong….
So, for the most part, we now know what we’re dealing with & the direction we need to continue to move in is definitely that of adoption. The Doctor did suggest we consider finding a surrogate if having a biological baby is truly important to us, but the reality of it is that it’s not. What was important to me was the experience of pregnancy. Of feeling my child growing within me. I now know that this likely won’t & probably shouldn’t happen not just for our mental health but the long term health of the potential child we would bring into the world.
We’re moving on & counting our many other blessings instead, like our two amazing little girls that we have the privilege of raising & the baby boy whom we shall soon meet.
